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User blog:K6ka/Pro-crastination
So where was I? Oh yes, so I just started this wiki up to be the butt where I dump my crap in... and nothing really came to be. I had hoped to write something for this wiki, but I've always passed it off and said, "I'll do it later." Well, later at least wound up to be today... but it could've easily been "never." I procrastinated. And I hate myself for it. The trait of procrastination runs in my family, and it's evident because nothing ever gets done in my family. Nothing. Things always look awesome on paper but, once you actually start doing it, things just fade off from there. Procrastination is something a lot of us are guilty for. Whether it be homework, exams, tests, weekly reports, etc., we seem to have this natural tendency to just say "I'll do it later." And "later" seems almost synonymous with "never." Procrastination 101 It's easy to procrastinate. Just busy yourself with something else. Video games are particularly notorious at helping procrastinators procrastinate. Anything that is addictive or captivating helps too. For instance, let's say you have three homework assignments due next week, all on the same date. Good parents and good teachers will certainly tell you that the "one week counts. Every bit of it." In other words, you were given a week to do that assignment because that assignment takes a week to do. There's the issue! Humans never seem to be particularly great at even piecing together the future. We can never seem to see what the long-term consequences of our actions are. Throughout history it always takes a disaster before we ever wake up and realize that what we've been doing would inevitably lead up to this. We see this in action every day when you procrastinate. You say to yourself, "Yeah, I'll do it eventually. Why rush — I have an entire week to do it!" Six days pass and you spent most of that time playing games, watching crappy videos, Instagramming your breakfast, and asking your friends if they ever bothered with the homework assignment. Oh my, please don't mix homework and social media. It never works. You wake up the day before your assignment is due, and you start to panic. You realize that you've put off on this assignment for much too long and now you have barely 24 hours to do it. And you need 12 hours of that for daily activities and 8 (usually 6, but the recommended amount is 8) hours of that asleep. So... you're screwed. Have fun! We usually look at a situation like this and think to ourselves, "Oh, we'll never put ourselves in that situation." And then we get our assignments and we spend most of our time lulling in front of our tablets and phones, doing our best to put thoughts of the assignments to the back of our heads. Even worse, when you've been through a situation like this and you do it again. Now I'm not accusing anyone of being a procrastinator. That would be pot calling the kettle black. I procrastinate too. In fact, I'm procrastinating just by typing this. But why do we procrastinate anyway? Why do we have this desire to leave things at the last minute? Why is this so profound in our modern culture that we seem to joke more about procrastination than we do actually trying to find a way to fix it? It's a guilty pleasure I say "guilty pleasure" because we all seem to enjoy procrastination, but we usually regret it in the end. Yet, we still do it again, for that pleasure, and we treat the guilt almost like a "cost of doing business." The main reason why we procrastinate is a little something called "stepping out of your comfort zone." We all want to live comfortably, and we don't like to get out of bed to go to work. Your bed is so warm and comfortable. Your workplace, your colleagues, and your boss is certainly not. I do feel ashamed when I say this, but I do enjoy acting and performing on stage. And one thing that dramatic arts teaches you is to step out of your comfort zone. I recently performed in a school play, and I played "Malvolio" in the Shakespearean play "Twelfth Night." Stepping out of my comfort zone was an absolute must. I can be funny on stage and I can stand being laughed at on stage. But the clothing is something I never liked, because I never liked costumes and I never liked uniforms. Malvolio wears the highlight of the evening, which is his infamous yellow stockings and cross-gartered laces. As someone who hates costumes, putting on those yellow stockings (Even worse, it went all the way up) and those ridiculous laces was well outside my comfort zone. But I persisted. Nailed it! Procrastination is all about "not wanting to get out of that little comfortable bubble." We tend to procrastinate because we find it painful to do work, so we'd rather avoid it.http://greatist.com/happiness/how-not-to-procrastinate-reason-procrastination And as an actor, stepping out of your comfort zone is something that you should get comfortable with. But yet, I still procrastinate, so I do look a bit like a hypocrite sometimes. But, that's the way things are for me. Getting over procrastination Procrastination is all about avoiding pain. But we don't usually realize that avoiding pain in itself causes pain. Procrastination is in fact quite painful. The feeling nags at you and keeps you awake at night. You can't relax because the fact that the inevitable will happen keeps flashing in front of your eyes.https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/in-the-age-anxiety/201103/why-do-you-procrastinate Procrastination doesn't solve the problem. It just postpones it. The best way to solve procrastination is to know that pain is indeed unpleasant, but we can't run away from it. Pain is how we learn in life. We learn in life not from our successes, but our failures. Failure is not a destination. Failure is not the end. Failure is the path to success. Failure is success. With failure comes pain. But with failure comes the glory of being able to look at pain in the face and laugh. Even if things don't turn out our way and we still get thrown back inside the doghouse, at least we tried. Learning how to dominate our fears is the key to success. Fears are something we fear. It doesn't change the fact. Yes, be afraid of fear. But don't be afraid to run at it. Still not convinced? Remember this: everyone that we perceive as successful wasn't always "successful." In order to get to where they were at now, they had to go through trials and failures. Steve Jobs, for instance, got fired from his own company. If he said, "Screw it, I'm quitting this race," sat down at the beach with a Cape Cod in his hand and never did another day of work in his life, he wouldn't be the guy we imagine today. Instead of quitting, he got back up and kept going. He refused to allow his life to finish right there at that moment. He wasn't finished yet. Remember: it's not whether you fall down or not. It's whether you get back up after you fall. So what does this all mean? Sometimes, in order to advance in life, we have to get hurt. Getting hurt is part of the growing up process. We can't learn how to be a successful businessperson if we don't know what it's like to be unsuccessful. We learn best from our failures, and when we fail, we should take the opportunity to learn from it and carry on, using the knowledge and experience we've gained. There's a good reason why we seem to be better able at remembering bad memories than good ones, and it's because there's a reason why bad things happen. At least, that's what I believe in. Now this doesn't mean I won't stop procrastinating. Can't guarantee that. But I do know that, if I have an assignment due the next day, maybe I should stop playing games and get my ass moving. References Category:Blog posts Category:K6ka's blogs